Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 June 1886 — Short on Months. [ARTICLE]

Short on Months.

Johnson came down town the other morning looking like his mother-in-law had just arrived with a full purpose and desire of remaining all summer. “Hello old fellow, ” exclaimed a friend meeting him, “what’s the awful matter with you anyhow?” “Why you see,” replied Johnson, leaning up against a lamp post and jabbing the toe of his boot by tits and starts against a brick in the pavement, in a reflective way, “my trouble dates back several years. When I was a young married man, sixteen or eighteen years ag®, I was romantic, and when the first little Johnson appeared to bless our happy home, I didn’t want to be prosaic and call him Thomas or John or any of those ordinary names, so I concluded I’d name him January, and follow this calendrical idea in naming such othels as the Lord in His goodness saw fit to send to our househoiayr— “That was - an excellent idea,” remarked his friend, “for it not only would keep you posted as to their order, but it saves your friends asking questions as to the precedence in age. ” “Just it” smiled Johnson brightening; “it caught me exactly in the same place, and everything went lovely, and when the last came three years ago, we called it December and thought our cup of bliss and our family were full.” “Well, weren’t they?" interrupted the friend. “Yes, until this morning,” went on Johnson, “but this morning at one o’clock twins came, and here I ani at my time,of life with the calendar filled up and a pair on my hands with nothing to draw to for names. ” “Bad, bad,” said the friend sympathetically. “It isn’t the twins I care so much about, as the names of them," pursued the dejected father, “for I ain’t like lots of men who might kick on twins, wnen they had already to set twelve plates at the table, but its the miserable poverty, the culpable incapacities of the almanac that I enter my protest against. It is too much, too much!” “Yes, two too much,” responded the friend, and taking Johnson by the arm ae, led him into a drug-store, where they sold poisons, plasters, arnica, and tooth brushes, but it was none of these the friend asked the druggist to pour out for the heart-broken sire of the surplus twins.— Merchant Traveler.